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Georgy Girl

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It is London in the early 1960s. Queen Elizabeth II is on the throne. Distinguished novelist and biographer Margaret Forster created a sensation with her 1965 GEORGY GIRL. Forster was soon writing a screenplay for a 1966 movie starring Lynn Redgrave as 27-year old virgin Georgina Parkin; with James Mason as Georgina's parents' wealthy, congenial 49-year old employer, James Leamington; with Charlotte Redgrave as 26-year old nymphomaniac violinist Meredith Montgomery; and Alan Bates as onetime bank clerk and now struggling musician Jos Jones. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won other important competitions.

The movie's theme song by the young Melbourne, Australia musicians, THE SEEKERS (still playing and still popular Down Under) is catchy, bouncy, upbeat. A 1970 musical version, GEORGY, flopped on Broadway after only four performances. To my knowledge GEORGY GIRL has not been done as a play, although with its compact cast it easily might. The underlying novel is short (my 1966 Berkeley Medallion paperback showing pensive 23-year old actgress Lynn Redgrave on the cover, has only 160 pages). It also moves very quickly, with everything taking place in a year or so.

Every character has a different take on Georgina Parkin:

-- By her parents, Ted and Doris Parkin, Georgina is called George. They do not know what makes George tick, but whatever it is, they dislike it. She is tall, overweight (for the film Lynn Redgrave made herself swell up to 180 pounds), clumsy, wears awful clothes, neglects her hair, has no sense of style and will never land a husband.

-- Ted is live-in valet/gardener/butler and Doris is cook/housekeeper to childless James Leamington and his bedridden wife Nelly. In the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s James had given jobless auto mechanic Ted a soft job and Ted continually grovels in gratitude to his amiable, easy-going, philandering boss. Childless James Leamington calls Georgina Georgy-porgy and has, down the decades, slowly fallen in love with her for her originality, spunk and unconventional ways. James has paid for George's expensive educadtion, including a disastrous finishing school year in Paris. She teaches dance three times a week to young children in a large upstairs room that James has allowed her to make over into a studio.The novel is basically about how Georgy-porgy reacts during the five months or so after James gives her a written draft contract which would bind Georgy to be James's mistress and James to adopt any resulting children. At a key point in the negotiations, realistic James tells Georgy-porgy: "You're no beauty and nothing could make you one. But you're unusual. All you need is a good stylist. I'll see you get it" (Ch. 5).

-- Meredith Anna Montgomery is a petite, exotic, brooding violinist performing with a good orchestra. Meredith, in many ways a lazy, profligate (four abortions already), unkempt flat mate has accepted George's invitation to lodge with her. Meredith's one virtue (in her own mind) is her total indifference to all persons and situations. She expects George to cater to her every whim and to give up the bedroom whenever a lover wants to share it with Meredith. George obliges.

-- Jos Jones has given up bank clerking for music. He is crazy about Meredith and when she invites him to marry her and be their coming child's father, Jos happily agrees. He moves in with Meredith and George exchanges her bed for a couch. Just as Meredith is about to give birth, Jos seduces George and they have a passionate three month relationship that continues after the arrival of baby Sara. Ever detached and self-seeking, Meredith persuades Jos to give up Sara for adoption. She also readily agrees to a divorce so Jos can marry George. This George will do only if Jos reclaims Sara. After a few weeks, Jos walks away from Georgy and Sara, since Georgy admits she much prefers his baby to him.

On the day Sara is born, Mrs Nelly Leamington dies unexpectedly. James Leamington goes into a lengthy funk and tells his valet Ted (who tells daughter George) that he will soon remarry. George is shocked. After all she is still pondering the mistress contract. What kind of future can Georgy have as a single, unwed, substitute mother? And the tale rollicks along.

BOTTOM LINE: while not precisely funny, GEORGY GIRL is, I think, true, ironic comedy. It is also a credible story of largely unreligious, amoral people bouncing off one another, incessantly sizing one another (and themselves) up. All these clashing perspectives bring Georgina Parkin into unstable focus. She is hungry for sex, but would settle for a baby, any baby. Georgy is multi-faceted, not a good candidate for conventional normality. But who knows? Maybe Georgy Girl has a chance at something like personal contentment and happiness. Read this enduringly good novel and find out, enjoyably, for yourself! -OOO-